Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

This symposium will cover the impact of mechanobiology on living systems and its relevance for the interaction of cells with materials. This topic is an emerging area in materials research with large-scale impact in the future, ranging from implants to tissue-engineered organs to soft robotics. The first part of the symposium will focus on the molecular mechanisms of controlling cells by the mechanical properties of molecules and materials, as well as mechanical linkages of molecules to materials. The second part will cover larger scale systems, including tissue engineering and implants. Thematically, the symposium will be centered around a grand challenge in mechanobiology: the design of materials that can physically direct cells to execute autonomous dynamic, coordinated, and multi-scale behaviors. The meeting will address this challenge by bringing together individuals from the basic and applied sciences and engineering in order to motivate new applications in materials science from recent findings in basic research.

Contributions submitted to the symposium can address both mechanobiological aspects from basic science (e.g. single molecule mechanobiology, biophysics, surface chemistry) and applied science (e.g. in vitro and in vivo biomaterial studies), or address novel methods to characterize mechanobiological properties.

Therefore the symposium will bring together scientists and engineers from various disciplines, providing a forum for discussing recent progress in mechanobiology in relation to materials science and material applications. Future opportunities will be discussed in the context of cutting-edge biomaterials fabrication and related disciplines, including 3D-bioprinting and biohybrid soft robotics.

Abstracts will be solicited in the following areas: Single molecule mechanobiology, cell-material interactions controlled by biomechanics, mechanobiology applications in medicine and engineering.

Topics will include:

• single-molecule mechanobiology
• controlling the mechanical properties of materials by chemistry
• cell mechanics
• cells as soft, active material
• cell-material interactions controlled by mechanics
• mechanobiology in soft implants
• mechanobiology in tissue engineering
• the role of mechanical compliance in the biomedical context
• 3D bioprinting
• biohybrid soft materials

• A tutorial complementing this symposium is tentatively planned.

Invited Speakers:

• Ming Guo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Cornelia Lee-Thedieck (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)
• David Mooney (Harvard University, USA)
• Vivek Shenoy (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
• Angela Pitenis (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
• Nancy Sottos (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
• Christopher Chen (Boston University, USA)
• Alexander Dunn (Stanford University, USA)
• Andres Garcia (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• Paul Janmey (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
• Kristopher Kilian (University of New South Wales, Australia)
• Jan Lammerding (Cornell University, USA)
• Jun Nakanishi (National Institute for Materials Science, Japan)
• Celeste Nelson (Princeton University, USA)
• Patrick Oakes (University of Rochester, USA)
• Kit Parker (Harvard University, USA)
• Medha Pathak (University of California Irvine, USA)
• Rob Shepherd (Cornell University, USA)
• Ana-Suncana Smith (University of Erlangen, Germany)
• Joachim Spatz (Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Germany)
• Britta Trappmann (Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine, Germany)
• Virgile Viassnof (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• Valerie Weaver (University of California San Francisco, USA)

Symposium Organizers